Safety is an important factor that consumers consider when purchasing a vehicle. To cater to these needs, automotive manufacturers are designing systems that enhance safety and security of the occupants of the vehicle. These designs, however, are typically targeted toward keeping occupants safe when the vehicle is moving or involved in an accident such as driver assistance systems, seat belt warning systems, and air bag deployment systems.
A need exists for increasing the safety of occupants when a vehicle is parked or lengthily started, but not moving. This is particularly important with respect to infants, handicapped or unconscious persons i.e. with non-autonomous occupants of a parked car. Unfortunately, there have been several reports recently of infants that have been left behind in a parked vehicle, and consequences of such negligence have been fatal. The infant died because of extreme environmental conditions that can arise in a parked vehicle. In another case, an infant seated in a started but not moving vehicle, while his father was shoveling the snow, died because of the toxic gas infiltration.
As mentioned above, there are a variety of situations where a non-autonomous person is left alone in the parked vehicle, with real risks that can result in tragic consequences. Such situations can be a result of forgetfulness, or may be caused by misevaluation of dangers of temporarily leaving the infant or the non-autonomous person alone in the vehicle. Finally, some situations may be due to a crash of the vehicle or a sudden indisposition of a driver of the vehicle that makes the driver loose consciousness, thereby becoming a non-autonomous occupant of the vehicle. In all these situations, the vehicle is not moving and a non-autonomous occupant exists inside the vehicle.
Though the situations as mentioned above occur rarely, the consequences of such situations are always tragic. In case of a vehicle in motion, there is a high probability that witnesses, though in some reasonable delay, will transmit an event of an accident or a crash. Therefore, adequate rescue resources are notified with minimum delay. On the other hand, in case of a parked or more generally a vehicle that is not moving, when the occupant's life is in danger, the probability that the dangerous event will be transmitted is very low.
Existing systems that could be related to implementation of safety measures in a parked vehicle consist of systems for controlling an interior temperature in a vehicle that respond to variations in temperature external to the vehicle. Further, systems exist that provide monitoring and control systems for remotely controlling undesirable climate condition inside a vehicle.